Local heroes, ’09 edition The Rhode Island music community flourished in 2009, with new full-lengths from the Coming Weak, California Smile, and the pride of Cranston West and official big-leaguers Monty Are I, who released Break Through the Silence in September.

Local heroes, ’09 edition The Rhode Island music community flourished in 2009, with new full-lengths from the Coming Weak, California Smile, and the pride of Cranston West and official big-leaguers Monty Are I, who released Break Through the Silence in September.

Wild things Jane Ring Frank's Boston Secession, which calls itself a "professional choral ensemble," began its 12th season with a short but ambitious program.

Tweak-folk Released this summer, Nico Muhly's Mothertongue (Bedroom Community) — the latest album by the ambitious contemporary classical music composer, a protégé of Philip Glass — offers listeners a bombastic example of the ongoing collaboration between the composer and Vermont-based folk singer Sam Amidon.

The electric company We all know how in 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, the previously all-acoustic Bob Dylan took the stage with an electric guitar, plugged in, enraged fans, and destroyed the folk-music scene forever.

Trail of tunes The best summer music festivals take something from the season: the smell of the surf, the sight of the mountains, fireworks, lawn seating — or, at least, fried dough.

The music man Forty years after a half-million hippies descended on a sprawling dairy farm in upstate New York, Woodstock has become shorthand for an entire epoch.